For 99 laps, Sheldon Creed had Homestead-Miami Speedway exactly where he wanted it. He had the pole, clean air, and a championship that was still a long shot but not yet a lost cause. Then the night turned on him in slow motion, one scuffed wall and one blown tire at a time, and he left the finale with plenty to say about how it happened.
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Creed did not hold back when asked where it went wrong for the Haas Factory Team driver, and he pointed straight at the lapped cars.
“We got to lap traffic and kind of at the end of every run I would die and just lose a lot of grip for whatever reason and it made it really hard to make pace. And yeah, we got to some lap cars in the 55 and he just is the way, never gets out of the way,” Creed told FrontStretch via X.
Creed’s struggles opened the door for Brandon Jones to take the race win, while Justin Allgaier’s seventh-place finish was enough to seal the 2026 series driver championship.
“Doesn’t have any respect or awareness for the leaders,” he added. “That’s Joey Gase for you all the time, all the time. But, yeah, I just really struggled behind him. I needed to clear him, and I didn’t as quickly as I needed to. And I popped the fence a few times in the closing laps, and then ultimately I lost my right front tire going down the front stretch. And, yeah, I just fell to six there.”
The shot was aimed at Joey Gase, whose No. 55 was among the lapped cars Creed had to work through while he was still racing for the lead. The timing made it costly. Every second lost behind a slower car was a second the leaders could stretch away, and with grip fading at the end of each run, Creed had little room to give.
Drivers fighting for wins have complained about this before. At Atlanta in 2019, Martin Truex Jr. chased Brad Keselowski in the closing laps but found Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s lapped No. 17 holding the bottom lane.
Truex eventually cleared him and reached Keselowski’s No. 2 Ford within two laps, but by then there was too little time left to make the pass. He finished second and lamented how much the traffic had cost him. The circumstances differed from Homestead, but the grievance was the same.
Traffic was only part of the damage. Creed was running third when he scraped the outside wall in the closing laps. The contact hurt the right-front tire, and it let go as he came down the front stretch on the final lap, dropping him to sixth.
The result ended any realistic title hope. Creed entered the finale 42 points behind Justin Allgaier and needed a near-perfect night plus help. He delivered the first half by starting on pole and leading 99 of the 200 laps. Allgaier, though, never left the fight and sealed the championship with a seventh-place finish.
Creed was gracious about how it played out. He said he expected Allgaier to do just what he did: run in the top five for much of the night and stay within reach once the No. 17 was out.
“I mean, I was obviously trying to win the stages and win the race, and I figured Justin would do that,” he said. “He’d run eighth to fifth all night and just keep the two in his sights, especially once the 17 was out, and just keep himself within arm’s distance of who he needed to. And he did exactly that all night.”
He also noted that the No. 7 never had to gamble the way the rest of the contenders did.
A farewell to HAAS Factory Team
Creed still called the year a success. He finished fourth in the final standings, 33 points behind Allgaier, after winning three races and spending stretches near the top of the championship order.
“Overall a good season. You know, to win three races and lead laps and lead points at times was awesome,” Creed said. “Yeah, really fun two years, honestly, with this group. And, you know, happy to lead laps in my last race with them.”
Homestead was his final outing with Haas Factory Team after two seasons. He moves to Sam Hunt Racing for 2027, carrying three wins and a real run at a title into the next chapter.
The tire failure and the traffic fight will stand out from the night, but so will the pole and the 99 laps led. He did not get the result he wanted, and the championship went to Allgaier, yet his closing words showed he left the team with appreciation for the time they spent together.